Mark Juergensmeyer

A “cosmic war” is an imagined battle between metaphysical forces—good and evil, right and wrong, order and chaos—that lies behind many cases of religion-related violence in the ...
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A “cosmic war” is an imagined battle between metaphysical forces—good and evil, right and wrong, order and chaos—that lies behind many cases of religion-related violence in the contemporary world. These transcendent spiritual images have been implanted onto the social and political scene, magnifying ordinary worldly conflict into sacred encounter. There is nothing specific to Christianity, Islam, or any other religion about this idea of cosmic war. Every religious tradition contains images of grand battles that have a divine valence to them. Hence every religion has some kind of mythic or legendary scenario of warfare that can be transported into contemporary conflict and elevate a social or political confrontation into cosmic war.

Paul S. Atkins

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Please check back later for the full article.
Suicide ...
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This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Please check back later for the full article.

Suicide in Japan has a relationship with various belief systems, including secular belief systems, such as Bushidō (‘the way of the warrior’) and emperor worship, as well as religious systems, such as Shintō, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Christianity, from the earliest times to the early twenty-first century.

Cultural and religious environments in Japan have tended to take a neutral or even positive attitude toward suicide to some extent, similar to that seen elsewhere, for example, in ancient Rome, but in contrast to the stigma attached to suicide by the Abrahamic religions.

Iconized Japanese practices of suicide, including seppuku/harakiri (ritualized self-disembowelment), junshi (suicide for the purposes of following one’s lord in death), shinjū (double suicide or murder–suicide by lovers), and the kamikaze of World War II (lit. “divine winds,” usually referred to as tokkōtai “special attack units” in Japanese) show the links between suicide in Japan and the construction of Japanese identity and are further expanded upon in literary and dramatic texts, in addition to religious and philosophical treatises and historical records. Suicide in Japan also intersects and overlaps with other forms of violence, such as warfare, capital punishment, and murder.

In addition to causes and motives, of interest are preferred or unusual methods of suicide in Japan, their distinctive aspects in comparison with other cultures, and the symbolic and ritual elements of Japanese suicide.

Maria Erling

Scholars use the concept of World Christianity both to account for the growth of Christianity beyond Western Christendom and to recognize the changing map of vitality and leadership within ...
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Scholars use the concept of World Christianity both to account for the growth of Christianity beyond Western Christendom and to recognize the changing map of vitality and leadership within Christian churches beyond the European and North American context. Scholars who use this concept have also committed to documenting the history of all of the churches around the world, making special efforts thereby not only to note the contributions of founders and missionary agencies, but also to investigate the important input of local teachers, evangelists, and pastors, so that a more inclusive history may be made available to these faith communities for their own self-understanding and direction. The spread of Christianity beyond the borders of Europe, a subject once envisioned by Kenneth Latourette as the result of the great century of missionary advance, cannot be understood solely as the accomplishment of the Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries sent from western Europe and North America. Through all the centuries of Christian expansion and migration, scholars need to document and explain not only the theological foundations of various faith traditions, but also how multiple Christianities have adapted and thrived and become rooted in multiple cultural contexts, and exhibit a special vibrancy today in the postcolonial, post-missionary churches in Africa and Asia. Luther’s influence on the rise of World Christianities is an important element in the vitality of contemporary churches in Africa and Asia, but his theological contribution to Christianity beyond the West awaits a fuller articulation and application to the questions and concerns of these emerging centers of Christianity.

Peter Schalk

The Tiger Movement had one ultimate political goal, and two main alternating methods to reach this goal, which was to obtain recognition by world community for the right of ...
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The Tiger Movement had one ultimate political goal, and two main alternating methods to reach this goal, which was to obtain recognition by world community for the right of self-determination for a group of people living in the northern and eastern provinces of the island of Sri Lanka (in accordance with UN A/Res/42/159, from 1987). These people were Tamil speakers. Self-determination implied the right to secession and to the establishment of a separate and sovereign state called Tamilīlam. Peaceful methods to reach this goal were negotiations, diplomacy, lobbying, conferences, workshops, and above all mediatation; Gandhian methods like hartal “strike” (closing down of shops) and satyāgraha “holding onto truth” (non-violent resistance like sit-downs) have also been used during the period 1956 till today. The Tiger Movement has promoted the non-martial method of fasting to death in protest, but this was not in the orthodox Gandhian way, which did not make a choice between martial and non-martial acts dependent on the circumstance. All non-martial methods could be militant, but not violent.

Depending on the circumstances, alternate methods, closely related to each other and to the goal, were used. The non-martial methods were used transnationally, the martial methods nationally, only on the island of Sri Lanka, with one exception—the assassination in 1991of Rājiv Gāndhi, which was executed in Tamiḻnāṭu.

Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ was conscious of several methods to reach the goal, but there was only one goal. In 2003, however, the Tiger Movement for the first and only time, suggested a temporary suspension of this goal, an interim regional autonomy instead of separatism for a period of trial of five years. This did not change the ultimate goal, but suspended its realization in time to create space for negotiations. The government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) rejected this proposal, called Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA); The GoSL already had an ultimate goal, the preservation of the constitutional and centralized unitary state. This rejection threw both sides back to their starting point.

The martial method to reach the ultimate goal consisted of several different forms of armed struggle, which were parallel with the non-armed struggle; each time the non-armed struggle failed, the martial struggle gained momentum, from the 1970s to 2009. We count today four periods of war from 1983–2009, separated by truces and cease-fires, but not by peace. Combatants made extensive use of the martial method of voluntary death, which in media language goes under the name of suicide attack, belt bombing, etc. The media has made this an identity-marker of the Tiger Movement.

The Tiger Movement’s martial methods comprised assassinations squads, whose task was to assassinate VIPs related to the GoSL, guerrilla attacks, martial methods of a standing army with specialized brigades, and attacks by deep penetrating units, often ending in voluntary death. The motto for all methods related to its ultimate goal was “the task of the Tigers is (to establish) Tamiḻīḻam.” The combatants’ determination was to act according to the norm do or die, which might end up as do and die—as it did in May 2009, the end of the Tiger Movement.

The leader of the Tiger Movement, Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ, held the firm view that methods may change (continuously), but the goal does not. He held the same ultimate goal, which was political, to establish Tamiḻīḻam based on the right of self-determination of a people. It was universal, he emphasized. He also referred to legal forms of violence in a national struggle for liberation from colonial and foreign domination (according, for example, to the United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/33/24 of November 29, 1978).

The reason for actualizing the right of self-determination for Tamil speakers was the result of political, social, and economic discrimination, including 171 massacres, well documented by the North-East Secretariat of Human Rights (NESoHR). [NESoHR, Massacres of Tamils 1956–2008 (Chennai: Manitham Publishers, 2009). There is a German edition, which also contains the massacres by the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF). NESoHR, “Damit wir nicht vergessen …” Massaker an Tamilen 1956–2008. Mit einer Einführung von Professor (em) Dr. Peter Schalk (Heidelberg: Draupadi Verlag, 2012)]. These massacres amounted to genocide in the interpretation of the Tiger Movement, performed by the government of Sri Lanka from 1956–2009, and by the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), during 1987–1990, with the assistance of deliverance of arms by India, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and Pakistan. The Tiger Movement was well aware of geopolitical reasons why the United States and India would not allow Tamiḻīḻam to emerge. The unarmed and armed struggles by the Tiger Movement were to counteract a deeply felt injustice. The two methods were closely related to the ultimate goal, which gave the Tiger Movement a moral justification, though the world outside did not necessarily agree.

Today we see that both methods were unsuccessful and the ultimate political goal was not reached. The GoSL suppressed the peaceful methods, and the martial methods earned the Tiger Movement the classification of “terrorists” by the United States, the European Union, India, Sri Lanka, and several other states. The end of the Tiger Movement came in May 2009, but Tamil speakers still cultivate its ultimate political goal, especially in the worldwide, transnational diaspora.

The Tiger Movement (puli iyakkam) was only one half of the organization known as Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE), founded in 1972 and reconstructed in 1976. The other half was known as the People’s Movement (makkaḷ iyakkam). In an environment of lasting peace, we could speak of a military organization that was subordinated to a civil society, but in a war environment, the hierarchy was reversed. The People’s Movement became supportive of the Tiger Movement in many ways. Civil tasks, like political administration, police, the judiciary, and the financial sectors were under the Tiger Movement in a de facto state, which was not recognized by any state.

GoSL based its claims for unity and the recognized sovereignty and integrity of its state on recognition by the United Nations and on a Constitution from 1972 and 1978. It insisted on the preservation of a centralized state-formation characterized as a unitary state, which made separatism, even non-violent agitation for separatism, illegal.

The ultimate goals of both parties, the recognition of the right of self-determination of a people and the preservation of the sovereignty of a state were incompatible. Confederalism and federalism were also rejected by the Tiger Movement, because they were too little, and by the GoSL, because they were too much.

Ariel Glucklich

This article examines the way that the hurting body enhances, deepens, and informs religious experience. It begins by examining the contested category of religious experience, contrasting ...
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This article examines the way that the hurting body enhances, deepens, and informs religious experience. It begins by examining the contested category of religious experience, contrasting the essentialist with the constructivist approaches. Both are complicated by consideration of embodiment—specifically, of the body in pain. Two concrete cases of religious pain, or sharp discomfort, are discussed as illustrations of a qualitative approach to studying pain and religious experience. This method is evaluated against two examples of a quantitative method. The article concludes that a qualitative interpretation of the meaning, rather than the analysis of causes, of religious hurting are superior, within specified parameters. Finally, the qualitative method requires an exposition that takes the form of a narrative in which the researcher acts as a close observer–participant.

Ryan P. Jordan

For centuries before the European colonization of North America, sectarian, ethnic, and racial discrimination were interrelated. The proscription of certain groups based on their ...
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For centuries before the European colonization of North America, sectarian, ethnic, and racial discrimination were interrelated. The proscription of certain groups based on their biological or other apparently ingrained characteristics, which is one definition of racism, in fact describes much religious prejudice in Western history—even as the modern term “racism” was not used until the 20th century. An early example of the similarities between religious and racial prejudice can be seen in the case of anti-Semitism, where merely possessing “Jewish blood” made one inherently unassimilable in many parts of Europe for nearly a thousand years before the initial European conquest of the New World. Throughout Western history, religious values have been mobilized to dehumanize other non-Christian groups such as Muslims, and starting in the 16th century, religious justifications of conquest played an indispensable role in the European takeover of the Americas. In the culture of the 17th- and 18th-century British colonies, still another example of religious and racial hatred existed in the anti-Catholicism of the original Protestant settlers, and this prejudice was particularly evident with the arrival of Irish immigrants in the 19th century. In contemporary language, the Irish belonged to the Celtic “race” and one of the many markers of this race’s inherent inferiority was Catholicism—a religious system that was alternatively defined as non-Western, pagan, or irrational by many Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who similarly saw themselves as a different, superior race. In addition to the Irish, many other racial groups—most notably Native Americans—were defined as inferior based on their religious beliefs. Throughout much of early American history, the normative religious culture of Anglo-Protestantism treated groups ranging from African slaves to Asian or Middle Eastern immigrants as alternatively unequal, corrupt, subversive, or civically immature by virtue of their religious identity. Historians can see many examples of the supposedly dangerous religious attributes of foreigners—such as those of the Chinese in the late 19th century—as a basis for restricting immigration. Evangelical Protestant ideas of divine chosen-ness also influenced imperial projects launched on behalf of the United States. The ideology of Manifest Destiny demonstrates how religious differences could be mobilized to excuse the conquest and monitoring of foreign subjects in places such as Mexico or the Philippines. Anglo-Protestant cultural chauvinism held sway for much of American history, though since the mid-1900s, it can be said to have lost some of its power. Throughout its history, many racial or ethnic groups—such as Hispanic Americans, African-Americans, or Asian Americans in the United States have struggled to counter the dominant ethnic or racial prejudice of the Anglo-Protestant majority by recovering alternative religious visions of nationhood or cultural solidarity. For groups such as the 20th-century Native American Church, or the African American Nation of Islam, religious expression formed an important vehicle to contest white supremacy.

Hans G. Kippenberg

An instruction manual consisting of four sheets in Arabic was found with three of the four teams that performed the terror attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. The writing ...
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An instruction manual consisting of four sheets in Arabic was found with three of the four teams that performed the terror attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. The writing conceived of the action as a raid (ghazwa), as we know it from early Islamic history. It instructed the teams how to perform the ghazwa correctly. Purifying their intentions by recitals, rituals, and bodily cleaning, they turn their attack into an act of worship. A part called the “second stage” anticipates the issue of assuring divine protection at the airport. Finally “a third stage” urges the teams to act in the plane according the practice of the Prophet and to achieve martyrdom.

To understand the manual and its framing of the violence, six dimensions will be analyzed: (1) Arguments for and against the authenticity of the document are discussed. (2) The attack happened in the wake of a declaration of war by the “World Islamic Front for the Jihad against Jews and Crusaders” in 1998, signed by Osama bin Laden and leaders of other jihadist groups. (3) The message spread across the Internet and was accepted by various groups that regarded the situation of Islam as threatened, among them a group of young Muslim men in Hamburg. A network called al-Qaeda emerged. (4) The present world is dominated by the power of ignorance and hubris (jahiliyya). The manual prescribed an attack in terms of the raids (ghazwa) of the Prophet in Medina. (5) The manual presumes a particular communal form of organizing militant Muslims. (6) It celebrated militancy of Muslims and presupposed a fighter’s ethos in the diaspora. An argument is made that the American concept of terrorism as a manifestation of evil and immorality destined to be eradicated militarily by the United States and their allies ignores the secular character of conflict and accelerates the cycle of violence.

Heike Behrend

The Uganda Martyrs Guild (UMG) was founded in 1897, after the killing of a number of young Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims, who had worked as pages at the court of the king of Buganda. ...
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The Uganda Martyrs Guild (UMG) was founded in 1897, after the killing of a number of young Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims, who had worked as pages at the court of the king of Buganda. The Catholic Church made the Catholic victims the center of a cult of martyrs. They were beatified in 1920 and canonized in 1964. Since its founding, the UMG has served as a point of mediation between Uganda and the transnational network of the Catholic Church. In the early 1990s, the UMG emerged as a witch-finding movement in western Uganda, which continued until the organization changed its procedures and began to refrain from naming witches in 2005. Since that time, members have increasingly shifted their focus instead to the healing and security of UMG members and those willing to join the UMG.

Lawrence A. Peskin

Encounters between Americans, Muslims, and Jews in North Africa played a foundational role in Americans’ early understanding of Islam and Judaism. At a time when the United States ...
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Encounters between Americans, Muslims, and Jews in North Africa played a foundational role in Americans’ early understanding of Islam and Judaism. At a time when the United States population had few Jews and virtually no free Muslims, North Africa was one of the places Americans were most likely to meet individuals from these groups.

Initially, American sailors and diplomats encountered North African Muslims and Jews as the result of frequent ship captures by Barbary corsairs beginning in the colonial period and culminating in the 1780s and 1790s. After 1815, the sailors and diplomats were joined by missionaries journeying to the Mediterranean region to convert Jews and Muslims as well as non-Protestant Christians.

These encounters prompted a good deal of literature published in the United States, including captivity narratives, novels, plays, histories, and missionary journals. These publications reinforced two dominant views of Islam. First, the early focus on Barbary corsairs capturing American “slaves” reinforced old notions of Islam as despotic and Muslims as “savages” similar to Native Americans. Missionary accounts prompted more thoughtful approaches to Muslim theology at the same time that they reinforced existing notions of Islam as a deceitful religion and revivified millenarian hopes that the declining Ottoman Empire foretold the Second Coming.

As a result of the captivity crises, Americans often had to deal with the area’s small but influential group of Jewish merchants in order to get terms and credit to free their countrymen. These fraught negotiations reinforced older European stereotypes of Jews as sharpers and Shylocks. As with Islam, the missionary period brought more thoughtful consideration of Jewish theology as Americans engaged in chiliastic hopes of bringing the Jews to Jerusalem.

After 1850 or so, Americans interested in Jews or Muslims looked less frequently to North Africa. Growing immigrant populations, first of Jews and then of Muslims, meant that Americans could encounter people of all three Abrahamic faiths at home. At the same time, missionary interests moved east, into the Holy Land, Syria, Turkey, and ultimately East Asia. Nevertheless, the early impact of North Africa on American thinking retained its influence, as is evident from President Barack Obama’s 2009 speech on American-Islamic relations delivered in Cairo.